the lover must struggle for words
by the ocean weekender
Summary: Jimmy would be forgiven for thinking "happily ever after" doesn't include dealing with past trauma and erectile dysfunction, but it does. Sequel to: Stiff and Pissed and Lost and Loose


Three years later and I'm back bitches :) 4.5k words in 6 hours to distract me from the fact that I am shortly becoming an old, old woman.

Warnings: incorrect grammar; erectile dysfunction; some medical trauma; some ww1 trauma; some crying; some "fuck God" attitudes and only a happy-ish ending.

Sometimes, Jimmy imagined himself to be a dashing hero like in one of the Hollywood pictures they showed at the cinema every other Saturday. It was a re-occurring dream he had. Swanning up to the big house and rescuing Thomas from all those who called him "Mr Barrow" as an insult; dragging him away from a life of service and sealing the deal with a romantic kiss.

He looked over at where Thomas was lying next to him, curled up and sleeping and cloaked in ghostly moonlight that turned him into a statue.

The truth played out on the back drop of reality in a very different way to what he had imagined in the long months away from Downton. It had differed from the reels and the silver screen too much for Jimmy to ever reconcile with it completely. In his reality, Thomas was cool and cold and whilst always certainly he was going to be responsible for his own downfall because it was the only way men like him could control their own destiny, it wasn't going to be shameful and scared and trying to knit his ribs back together to heal the gaping hole loneliness has left. Without even having to think about it, Jimmy pulled the sheets up higher, until they were both covered right up to their chins. The bruises scarred into the pale skin of Thomas' forearms hurt him every time he saw them. They were storm clouds gathering over an otherwise flawless sky. An ink spill that had nearly erased every word Thomas had ever written to him. The only memoir of the black and blue bags that'd lived under both their eyes when Thomas was laid up in a hospital bed looking like all the life had been bleached out of him.

Jimmy thinks he can be forgiven for not wanting to think about that time anymore.

Well, he decides firmly. Why _should_ he? They aren't at Downton anymore. They have their own little flat, their own bed, their own lives. Jimmy works at the _Dog & Crown_ and the boss has muttered about him taking over in a few years when he retires. Thomas has a job at a clockmaker's a mile away and- well, his lover doesn't find much point in talking about work, but Jimmy knows he's happier there than he ever was _before_. It used to only be on Thursdays and Saturdays and the rest of the week he'd help in the pub, but the bloke in charge there has hired him Monday to Friday now which must be a good sign. The only thing wrong with their lives is that the living room window rattles when the wind's coming in from the east and neither of them have gotten round to fixing it yet. There's no reason to think about all the years they wasted working for rich people who need their newspapers ironed free of creases before they read them. They're still young yet- they've settled into a comfortable routine here, and maybe they aren't as young as they used to be, maybe the idea of being settled down and in it for the long-haul doesn't set Jimmy off twitching restlessly like it used to, maybe Thomas has mellowed a bit, maybe both of them are less annoyed with the people around them than they once were, maybe they've made friends and a life here and settled down, but they aren't old, and... it's _nice_. Jimmy is- he's _happy_. The fear that his heart used to home- the refusal to ever experience prolonged happiness because he was only going to lose it eventually- is still there, at the edges. But, well, the happiness isn't going to go away, he's realised. Unless he does something tremendously stupid then, this is _his_. This is Jimmy's life now and he can keep it.

"Mmm... Jimmy?" a sleepy mumble comes from his left. "What'chu doin' awake?"

His hair is all mussed up and his accent weighs his words down to become a long, languid wave. Jimmy feels himself smiling. "Watching you."

"Creep." His nose scrunches up without opening his eyes and Jimmy bursts out laughing. "C'mere."

He squirms into the hot warm space between Thomas' arms and finds as he does every time that he fits it perfectly. Thomas pats the body part closest to him (Jimmy's nose, as it happens) once, twice and then curls back down under the duvet.

Jimmy waits until he falls back asleep, and then listens as he breathes. Not as regular as a clock. Not as loud as the few cars that go past. Not exactly what he had been expecting all those years ago when he began to think about settling down. But he doesn't want anything else now, except for a living room window that doesn't rattle when it's windy.

It's all so fucked up and Jimmy can't breathe. It feels like when he tried cigarettes for the first time. It feels like when he got Miss Baxter's letter. It feels like when he phoned. It feels like when all he could do was sit by a hospital bed for four days.

"Jimmy- Jimmy, it's alright," Thomas tries to soothe him. "Everything's fine- I'm fine- everyone's fine- Jimmy, what's going on?"

Tears prickle his eyes. Thomas is trying to help but he can't help and Jimmy doesn't know what's going on either, but he's got an idea and it's stupid- _so_ stupid. No way is he ruining his happy life for an idea so stupid it would make Alfred look like Einstein. He chokes out a sob and feels something on his face that isn't left over raindrops. Breathing isn't getting any easier and his knees are starting to shake a bit too much to stand. It feels like he's having a heart attack. Is he dying? It feels like he's dying, and yet even that isn't as upsetting as the sight he's just seen.

"Don't-" he manages to say. _Don't ever do that again. Don't ever scare me like that again_. He's glad more tears cut the words off before he can say them- how ridiculous is it that he doesn't want Thomas going outside for a smoke ever again? How ridiculous is it that he wants to uproot their entire life and move to a flat where the landlady lets them smoke indoors?

"Don't what?"

The rain has seeped into his clothes and he's cold and he can't breathe and he can't entirely convince himself Thomas is really there and he can't he can't he _can't_. "Hold me?" he asks. Jimmy finds himself cringing away- this isn't him. Whoever said those words isn't him. His voice doesn't sound like that. Never in his life has he sounded as pathetic as that.

Thomas surges forward and holds him without hesitation. Jimmy finally manages to fucking breathe.

"It's alright," he whispers in his ear. He can feel the breathe on his skin, tickling his hair. Remembers when for five days all he had to assure himself the man cradling his shaking form was alive was the hot little breathes he'd take- and sometimes how he had to get right up close to check he still even had that. It sets him off crying even harder, and he feels Thomas manoeuvring him across the carpet and sitting him down on the sofa- they have a _sofa_ now, a living room, a hearth, a kitchen, a bedroom, and Jimmy's running the risk of ruin by being so stupid.

"Just breathe, Jimmy, it's alright. I know it doesn't feel like you can right now, but it'll go away soon. It's alright- it's alright- it's not real anymore."

And somehow, Jimmy eventually begins to feel slightly better. Or at least he manages to think that kneeling on the floor is going to play hell on Thomas' knees and if it stains his trousers he'll be in a mood about it for the rest of the night.

"It's alright," the elder man repeats gently. "It's alright, luv. Was it the War?"

 _No_ , Jimmy thinks. Not the war Thomas means. Not shells and shellshock and trenches and a glove covering a bullet wound. But the war Thomas fought- the private little men like them have to fight inside their own heads against the rest of the world. The war men like them don't come back from. The war that puts grave dirt in their mouths and nearly put Thomas in an early grave.

"It was- so stupid, Thomas, 'm so _stupid_."

Warmth envelopes him as Thomas' hands come up to cradle his face. His glove isn't on; he doesn't wear it so much anymore if he isn't at work. Jimmy presses his cheek flush to the scar tissue and tries to remember that neither of them are dead yet.

"You're not stupid, luv, tell me."

Jimmy's got a problem, see, because he feels soft things in his heart but he doesn't know how to gift them to another without bloodstains. The words don't come out right. The emotions he feels start to twist until he has to spit them all up or they'll start to kill him, but they're not things you should ever tell another person. He's lost more friends than he can remember because when things start to get honest, start to be stripped back, Jimmy says hurtful things. And later on, he ran away before he had to say them. And then after that, he started running so early he never got the chance to start feeling anything about anyone.

But Thomas isn't anyone. He's Mr Barrow. He's Thomas. Jimmy has to _try_.

"You were-" he has to stop, because breathing still isn't coming as easy as it should. "Back then- when- smoke break and they said- they said- and then just now- you- and I couldn't, I couldn't see you, and-" he can't breathe. Thomas closes his eyes and Jimmy stops breathing until he opens them again.

"Ah." Thomas says.

It's the wrong thing- he's said the wrong thing, Jimmy knows. Thomas is going blank, he's shutting down inside because they had a nice life going and Jimmy's gone and put his foot in his mouth and said the wrong thing and cocked it all up. Again. He always does, he knows, but it hurts more this time than ever before.

"I'm sorry," he says. It's wrong- apologies don't belong in his mouth, he realised a long time ago, so he stopped saying them once and then never again.

"No-" Thomas opens his eyes and rubs his hands up and down his shoulders. "No- it's- it's alright. I'm sorry- I didn't think-"

"You didn't think going for a smoke would warrant me losing my marbles."

The words stop him in his tracks, and then- he chuckles. Jimmy laughs though he doesn't mean to, and then they're giggling together. Tear-stained and stupid and together. Jimmy doesn't think he's ever felt so relieved in his life.

"You'll just have to handcuff us together," smiles Thomas, which makes them laugh more. Somehow they end up in bed together- half naked and curling against each other to fight off the iciness brought on by staying in rain-soaked clothes longer than any sane men should. If insanity is the only path to sleeping beside Thomas every night, Jimmy never wants to have a sensible thought ever again.

"Get up, Jimmy."

"Hnnffghhl."

"You'll be late for the train."

"Mpppffggllubit-oi!" he bolts upright mere seconds after the pillow connects with the back of his head.

The owner of said pillow is standing over him, looking decidedly unimpressed. "You're going to miss the train."

"I'm going to miss you," Jimmy blurts out.

He watches as Thomas softens ever so slightly, then leans forward and kisses him. "I'll miss you too. I love you. I'll see you when you get back." They kiss one more time, then Thomas stands up and heads off to the living room.

And takes the blankets with him.

Jimmy lets out an unmanly shriek as his body comes into contact with the winter air, "Thomas!"

The last thing he hears of his lover for three days is him giggling.

The food orders from _Gregson & Co Butchers_ haven't been right for the past four months, and somehow Jimmy is the only one who can be trusted to go and sort it out short of the boss himself. It's... nice, actually. At Downton, he'd have either gotten out of more work to do, or he'd have done it to spite all the faces round the breakfast table saying he couldn't. Now, he _wants_ to put things right. He _wants_ to be able to send a telegram back to the pub saying everything's sorted. He _wants_ to do a good job, and he doesn't want the boss' praise unless he has done.

It's not a change he ever thought would happen- he can't even say exactly when it did happen. But he has changed. Thomas has, too. Though they don't talk much about work, sometimes Thomas comes home smiling. The other week he was left in charge of the shop by himself for the afternoon, and he came back in such a good mood it made Jimmy giddy just to look at him.

They've changed. And they're happier for it. So when Jimmy turns in for the night at the little bed and breakfast work's putting him up in for the next three days, he turns his mind to the one area of life that isn't so good and is still to be put to rights.

It's not like he and Thomas don't love each other, but they're not _lovers_ the way the word means. They haven't done the deed yet, and- Jimmy isn't complaining. There was that bloke behind the pub back at Downton before Lady Anstruther, then Lady Anstruther herself, then this one chap when Jimmy had been invited to a party that turned out to be God-awful and they'd both drunk a little too much to try and cope with how bloody crap the whole affair was and woke up the next morning alone in his own bed, with fuzzy snatches of another bed with a second occupant and hands unbuttoning an item of his clothing. It's probably a good thing, really, that he and Thomas haven't _consummated_ the whole thing. And Thomas was out of that hospital as soon as he could sit up by himself and Jimmy was terribly caught up in the rollercoaster of emotions about everything and enabled him probably more than he ought. Walking all the way from the hospital to the train station (because Thomas insisted he didn't trust them not to bill them for a taxi, even though Mrs Hughes had offered and silenced Carson) then spending an entire day travelling and finally arriving in London at ten at night when the day before he'd been laid up in a hospital bed hadn't been a situation in which Jimmy had been entertaining any thoughts about doing any things.

And- though Jimmy will admit it only over his dead body- he hasn't actually had the full _experience_ of men like him. He hasn't been ready.

But he is now, and, Jimmy decides, when he goes home he and Thomas are going to finally have sex. These past couple of months he's been remembering that he has needs, and he's ready. Took a long time to get to this point, but he's ready now, and he wants to. And he thinks Thomas probably wants to too, though he's been very good about it- Jimmy hasn't caught not one smouldering glance since they started living together.

Thomas has been patient enough. When he gets home, Jimmy is going to give him the last piece of the puzzle.

The butcher situation can't be salvaged, but Jimmy sends a telegram the first night then spends the rest of the trip snooping around for different butchers they could use- he even gets quotes and names and telephone numbers, though the boss didn't ask, and when he gets back to work the extra labour earns him Saturday and Sunday off. His boss claps him on the shoulder and Jimmy feels _good_ , then on the way home he imagines Carson doing the same thing and enters the flat crying with laughter and when he tells Thomas he starts laughing too.

When the clock ticks ten, they end up going to bed- in the summer, he thinks, it'll be lighter in the evening. They can stay up for longer and not have to use as many candles. The idea excites him the way summer always has. Warm weather, blue skies, picnics, and now it'll include Thomas. There was a place the bloke at the party told him about, whilst he was still sober enough to remember, down in Brighton where men like them can go. A bar, but that rented out rooms for holiday makers. Double rooms at very good rates with beds that can easily be pushed together, and a breakfast table where the shadows thrown on the serving hatch by the light behind it sometimes look like two women kissing.

The whole idea puts him in a good mood, and as soon as they're both horizontal he practically throws himself into Thomas' arms.

"What's got you so happy?"

Jimmy tips his head back and smiles at him, "You."

The look on Thomas' face is one he wishes he could capture in a photograph. But, he tells himself, he'll see it again. Lots of times. Starting Saturday.

Like many things in Jimmy's life: it starts out good. Thomas has to go in Saturday morning because for some reason the Saturday girl couldn't make it this week, but it's only until noon, and then they have the whole weekend to spend together, just the two of them.

"Mornin'" Thomas mumbles sleepily against his lips.

"Hello," Jimmy feels himself smiling without meaning to. He can't help it. Thomas just does that to him. "I love you."

He does, he does, he does. He tells him every day. He knows Thomas already knows but he just needs to tell him. So he does.

"I love you too."

Jimmy only smiles wider.

When Thomas works out what it is that he wants, the step that he wants the take, the thing that he wants them to do, he freezes. "You want…"

"I want this," Jimmy tells him firmly. "If you don't then we shan't do it, but- when you do."

He's saying the wrong thing again. He had a whole speech written in his head. Things he wanted to say. Stuff he wanted Thomas to know, but none of it is coming out right. The reality is that he's awkward and more scared than he thought he would be and not entirely as confident in his appearance as he was right before he brought the whole thing up. Thomas sits up straighter in bed. His bad arm- the scarred one- is hidden under a fold of the sheet, and Jimmy is glad. He hates seeing it, but at the same time he always ends up looking at it, and it's always a fight to stop his gaze drifting. In the three months they've been living together, he hasn't even tried to touch it. Not once.

If he can just touch it when he's on top of Thomas though- when they're together and he's got him pinned to the mattress; if he can just lean forward and get their faces closer together while they're fucking and Thomas is splayed out beneath him and he can touch the black and blue marks whilst they aren't thinking about them and blank them out completely under his palm- he thinks that might be the only way they're ever going to move on. And Jimmy wants to move on, desperately- _restlessly_ , in a way that's familiar but not. He's been restless his whole life for something, and now he's got it and he doesn't want to take anything with him when he jumps headfirst into his new life and starts living it at a hundred miles an hour for the rest of his days. Just Thomas. Once every last thing clicks into place, once every bad thing has been erased, the two of them are going to jump off that cliff so tangled together that nothing will ever be able to separate them ever again.

Jimmy wants _that_ more than anything.

Thomas sighs. "Jimmy."

Something deep and dark and loathing twists deep in his ribs, "Don't you like me?"

"Of course I do!" and he looks horrified that Jimmy could ever think such a thing and it makes him feel a bit better, but, "Then why don't you want to?"

His expression hardens. His mouth falls into a grim line. "I chose my own path, Jimmy."

"What- but you're here- you love me- Thomas, _what_?"

"You know what I did back then. And now I can't do it."

"Do _what?!"_ If he doesn't find out what's going on in the next two seconds he's going to-

" _Can't_." He replies and Jimmy reels to see that Thomas looks _distraught_. He isn't- this isn't his Thomas, this isn't his lover, this isn't his friend, this isn't real, this isn't his life, for a minute Jimmy thinks he never left the hospital ward that day and the past three months have just been a wild hallucination because the look on Thomas' face is a dead ringer for how he looked _back_ _then_ and Jimmy had sworn to himself he would never see it again.

Carefully, slowly, like every bone is at risk of crumbling if he goes too fast, he moves closer and takes his hand. The hand whose veins blossom into bruises before they get to his elbow. Without ever looking away from Thomas' face, he slides his other hand up to feel what he's been avoiding for three months. It's actually not all that bad- for a scar. The discolouration is the worst part of it. Apart from that, there isn't much the matter. There are dints in the skin where the abscesses were, some tiny raised lines from where Thomas' hands had been unsteady and he'd scratched himself by accident with the needle tip. "What do you mean?" he asks.

Thomas looks away. Jimmy stays where he is, and eventually he feels Thomas' free hand ghosting the inside of his thigh. "You can-"Thomas whispers. "You- it all _works_. After what I did, I…" his voice trails out. Slowly, he raises his head and meets Jimmy's eyes. "I don't." He whispers, wide-eyed and fearful. "I can't-" when the tips of his fingertips come into contact with what just minutes ago was all he could think with, Jimmy understands. And he understands what it means.

And he says, "It's alright." And he thinks this must be what God does to men like him. Because he put it off for so long- put off being happy for so long, wasn't ready for so long, avoided the truth for so long. And now he can't have it.

Jimmy reckons that this is the least he deserves, and- it was always going to be the way, wasn't it? He did this. He caused this. If he hadn't been such a coward, had only told Thomas sooner, had only written to Thomas more, only visited him earlier, only been braver. Thinks of how he sees men in the street flinch when a car backfires or fireworks go off. He understands. And just like Thomas came back from one war with a bullet hole in his hand like some blasphemous fancy-dress version of Christ, he's come back from another wounded again. Only it's not just some surface wound now, it's deep. Spanning from his forearm right down into him and it's not going to be something Jimmy can fix. That anyone can fix. They aren't Lord and Lady Crawley- Thomas isn't one day just going to be all better again. He's going to be scarred the rest of their lives. Jimmy can grab him about the shoulders and jump off the cliff headfirst anyway, but it isn't going to work. There'll be a nail that'll snag them back, and if he jumps, it might snag so hard that Thomas is torn away from him completely.

"It's alright," he says again. He feels his grip tighten on Thomas' hand. Feels their bones creaking with the force of it. "It's- stop _looking_ like that, Thomas, it's alright. It's going to be alright. We're still- we _live_ together, Thomas, Christ, we're going to be alright."

His lover looks haunted in a way Jimmy's never seen him. Only he thinks that he's always been there, and he just didn't want to see. Men like them have mouths like graves and hearts like ghosts. "Jimmy, you don't understand, I can't do-"

"No." He finds himself holding onto Thomas' shoulders, pulling him in close almost like he can say the words straight into Thomas' mouth- he will if he has to. "It doesn't matter, Thomas, it _doesn't matter_ , I love you I love you I love you and you're not going anywhere and neither am I." Jimmy breathes in. Collects himself. "Do you only like me sex-wise?"

"No." Thomas says hoarsely. Jimmy doesn't think either of them has ever been so truthful in their lives, but clearly whatever parts of their brains that can still think in the midst of all this realise what's at stake.

"What way do you like me?"

"Every way." He says it like a Confession. Jimmy would march straight up to the throne of the almighty Lord Himself and repeat every word he says. "I love you every way. For everything."

"Then it doesn't matter. You don't have to-" he gestures vaguely. He doesn't know how to put it into words without it coming out wrong. It's too much of a dangerous game to play; he's got his whole life to lose. "I love you every way, too." Maybe he should have said that bit first, but it's too late now. "The- the sex part doesn't- it isn't _important_. And I'm not an expert on these things, but I know there are… other things- for us to do. That don't need-" he gestures again. "I love you, alright?"

"Yeah." Thomas says, eyes searching his for a lie Jimmy will never tell. "I love you too."


End file.
